


From the Depths I Called to You

by Minutia_R



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Canon Harm to Animals, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 14:10:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15731004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/pseuds/Minutia_R
Summary: Costis' god appears to him when he's hit rock bottom.





	From the Depths I Called to You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kiraly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiraly/gifts).



My eyes stung with flour. I couldn’t see to ward off the the miller’s lunging dog, or the blows from the miller’s club. I stumbled backwards, and my foot came down hard on rotten wood and kept going.

I’d once pleaded very eloquently with the gods for my king’s life. When he was attacked by assassins, I’d promised ten golden cups to the goddess of mercy. In Mede, I later learned, her name is Shesmegah, but at the time I called her Philia, and you can still see my ten golden cups gleaming on Philia’s altar on Temple Hill.

(My king paid for them out of the royal treasury. I’d never have been able to afford them myself. Eloquent, yes. Smart, not particularly.)

But as I fell, the only thing I could do was fling a hand upwards into the suddenly empty air and gasp out, “My god--”

Then I hit bottom. The breath was knocked out of me and I heard a sickening snap. _It’s my neck_ , I thought. It didn’t hurt. It happens like that sometimes in the heat of battle. Usually the pain hits after a few seconds, but this time I knew it wouldn’t. _This is it_.

And everything went black.

Some time later, I heard the murmuring of the other dead. The gray men in the gray lands. _Dust is their fare dust and clay is their food and their drink_ , I thought, and couldn’t say where the words had come from. But they were true: my mouth was clotted with the taste of dust. I started to make out words in the murmuring, a continual low whine, _please please master please_. Like the slaves bound for the tin mines. Even more than the thought of adding my voice to that chorus, I’d hated Kamet adding his. Clever, sarcastic, conceited Kamet, begging like it was the most natural thing in the world to him. But I’d eaten half the barley cake he’d gotten anyway. Maybe that was what had landed me in a Mede hell.

I blinked and rubbed my eyes, but it didn’t help much: all I saw was a single shaft of light that burned my eyes and did nothing to illuminate the blackness around me. I tried to swallow the filthy taste out of my mouth and found I couldn’t. Beneath me the ground was lumpy, uneven, furry--

Furry? Still sightless, I felt around, my hands landing on a thick ridge of muscled shoulders, a broad snout. It was the miller’s dog. I’d fallen on the miller’s dog, and it was the dog’s bones I’d heard breaking, not my own. It was dead, and I wasn’t. The murmuring of the dead I’d heard was nothing but ringing in my ears. There were no swarms of gray men, but, there at the bottom of the well, one other person was with me.

“Careless, Costis,” he said.

The last time I’d seen him we were on the roof of the palace in Attolia. We were both far from home. I shouldn’t have been surprised he was with me, though. I _had_ called on him.

“My throat hurts,” I said petulantly.

He laughed. Given the only other worshiper of his I’d met, I suppose he was used to prayers coming in the form of irrelevant complaints. “So,” he said.

“Thank you,” I muttered, even more petulantly, I’m afraid. The _careless_ comment still stung. “My king once told me that safety is an illusion. That his god held him wherever he walked, and if you chose to drop him, you could do it as easily from the bottom stair of a staircase as from the top of the battlements. Or from a rotten well-cover.”

“Did he now,” said the god. “How very philosophical of him.”

This time when the god laughed, I laughed with him. I ended up coughing up a lot of gunk, and it didn’t make my throat feel any better, but it did make _me_ feel better. I’d been telling Kamet stories of my king for months. Lately I’d been doing it just to see the face he made, with that little disdainful curl of his lip. But it felt even better to laugh at my king with someone who knew him just as well as I did.

I missed my king desperately. I had no idea what I’d say to him if I ever saw him again.

“ _Why_ did you catch me?” I asked the god. “I failed you.” I didn’t know what had become of Kamet. Maybe the miller and his friends had done for him. I hoped he’d gotten away. If he had, I doubted he’d have much faith left in the protection of Attolia.

“I move in mysterious ways,” said Eugenides. “And I wouldn’t be so sure of that, if I were you.”

Then he was gone. The shaft of sunlight piercing the top of the well moved on, and I was left in darkness again. I got to my feet, tried climbing up the walls, but they were too smooth and I couldn’t get a grip. My king could probably have done it, one-handed as he was. “My god?” I called. “A little more help, please?”

There was no answer.

A little later, though, I heard footsteps, and I froze, thinking maybe the miller had come back to finish what he’d started. There was a slithering sound near the mouth of the well, and the blackness deepened even more, and then I heard a startled yelp.

And a clever, conceited, beautifully familiar voice swearing, “Monsters of hell.”

“Kamet?” I said.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank my betas for looking this over (including looking up some canon facts when I didn't have access to all the books).


End file.
